Category: In My Feelings

What is gaslighting behavior?Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse used by narcissists in order to instill in their victim’s an extreme sense of anxiety and confusion to the point where they no longer trust their own memory, perception or judgment.

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WOW <3 <3 <3“Dear white people, You know how horrible you felt when North Korea killed Otto Warmbier? You know how you kept thinking that could have been your kid? How you went and told stories about that movie Midnight Express and thought about all the stupid mistakes your kid made growing up and thanked God that at least he/she made those mistakes here where they were protected and not in some “foreign country” which did not privilege them? You know how you thought that if only there was some way of warning young people about the dangers of travel to “certain” places it would all be allright? Well that’s the way black and brown people, and maybe SOME who are in solidarity with them (still very much a work in progress) feel when OUR cops working for OUR country killed Philando Castille (and so many more, so very many more) and OUR jury failed to convict except, of course, it isn’t happening in a foreign country. It is happening here and there is nowhere they can go to escape it. They do warn their children with “the talk” and more, but it makes no difference. They can do everything right, just like Philando Castillo and so many others did everything right, and they will still be killed. What is worse, most of their white neighbors and co-workers and, dare I say, friends don’t even see it, let alone care. Until his life matters just as much TO US as Otto’s life, until we are just as outraged by the way our police and our courts and our prisons and our government all conspire to kill black and brown kids, often for nothing, as we are about foreign governments killing white kids for stupidity the horror will continue. So what are you willing to do today? Are you willing to at read this post and give it some thought? Are you willing to ask yourself these questions? Are you willing to talk to your friends and family about it? Don’t go apologizing to black or brown people. They are tired of hearing it. Don’t bother them at all. Bother US. We have work to do in our own families and communities. Let’s get on it.”

Bev Collier posted:“We can’t have nothing. Not our skin. Not our peace. Not our sanctuary. Can’t have nothing. Can’t shop, can’t swim, can’t walk home. Can’t pray. Can’t worship. Can’t have candy. Can’t sit in a car with friends with the windows down, bathed in bass. Can’t be a free black girl, free black child, free black boy. Can’t have courtesy. Can’t ask for help. Can’t have nothing. Can’t get the benefit of the doubt. Can’t get called by the names we want to be called. Can’t sit in church, pray in church, have a church, mosque, temple. Can’t have nothing. Can’t have a nice day, Can’t have an uninterrupted ride home. Can’t have a day when you don’t have to look over your shoulder. Can’t have nothing. Can’t have a day where you KNOW without a shadow of a doubt the people you love will come home alive. Can’t. Have. Nothing. Can’t have a day when our everything isn’t in question. Can’t even die without an “assist”. Can’t even have a proper burial. Can’t even have a memorial that goes untouched.Can’t not be followed. In a store. For a block. For a mile. For a day. For days. For years. For life.Can’t even get an isolated incident.Can’t get an acknowledgement that the race card is manufactured, store bought, and made from our skin.Can’t have nothing.Can’t be a disappeared black girl found safe and in time.Can’t get a disappeared black girl’s name read on air.Can’t have an indictment, conviction, blah, blah, blah.Can’t have paid leave, unpaid leave,breakstop.Can’t have nothing.”– Derrek Westin Brown.

The Louisville chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement called for justice during a vigil and march following recent police shootings. Sam Upshaw Jr./The CJ

(Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)

Since police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown two years ago Tuesday in Ferguson, Mo., the words “Black Lives Matter” have morphed from a public outcry into a national movement.

Through a decentralized collection of grass-roots activists and groups, Black Lives Matter protesters have rallied on the streets of cities around the nation where African Americans have been killed in police-involved shootings, including Baltimore, Minneapolis and Baton Rouge. The movement even made its presence felt in protests at July’s presidential conventions.

Activists who drive the Black Lives Matter movement and academics who study it say it all began with Brown’s death, when images of his body lying on the street of a northern St. Louis suburb and accounts of his killing spread widely through Twitter and sparked protests and media attention.

“If Mike wasn’t killed and people weren’t directly impacted, if we didn’t leave our homes, I don’t know where or what movement I would (have been in) two years ago,” said Johnetta Elzie, 27, a Ferguson protester who has become one the movement’s most prominent voices.

Without Brown’s death, Elzie said, “I probably wouldn’t be as involved as I am now.”

Kwame Rose, 22, became an activist in Baltimore after a 25-year-old black man, Freddie Gray, died in police custody eight months after Brown’s death. Black people dying at police hands isn’t new, Rose said, but the recent incidents have received more widespread attention because of social media .

“Black people have been having these conversations in our living rooms,” Rose said. “But social media has invited our followers, and millions of them, into our living rooms to have this conversation with us, in a sense.”

(Photo: Brown Family via AP)

#BlackLivesMatter, the now-iconic Twitter hashtag, first surfaced in 2013 after the acquittal of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the Florida shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old. It accompanied a public expression of grief by Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza.

Use of #BlackLivesMatter had diminished by summer 2014, however, said Deen Freelon, an associate professor at American University who studies online political expression. In the months after of Brown’s death, the hashtag became more widely used among people sharing frustration about not only Brown’s death, but also other incidents around the country.

Freelon co-authored a study, Beyond the Hashtags, that examined 40 million tweets related to Ferguson and Black Lives Matter. It determined that Brown’s killing, paired with the protests and media attention that followed, propelled Black Lives Matter from a expression into a national movement.

A handful of Twitter users played key roles in driving awareness of Brown’s death on Aug. 9, 2014, the study determined. First, St. Louis rapper Tef Poe tweeted a photo of Brown’s body lying in the street that was retweeted more than 5,000 times.

Then activists Michael Skolnik, a New York-based entrepreneur, and Shaun King, a writer for New York Daily News, tweeted streams of details, including that Brown was unarmed and that police had left his body in the street for hours. Then came the national media, which leaned on social media to source on-the-ground reports and photos.

What really bolstered the movement, Freelon said, were the protests and police response in the days after the Ferguson incident. By Aug. 12, activists hit the streets. Police responded with armored vehicles, military-grade equipment and what critics considered disproportionate force. Images spread online of officers firing tear gas and rubber bullets at crowds.

Multiple hashtags found widespread use after Brown’s killing, including #HandsUpDontShoot and #NoJusticeNoPeace, driving demonstrators into the streets. The simple hashtag #Ferguson was the most used in the study’s data. But #BlackLivesMatter found favor during an Aug. 30 protest march in Ferguson, the study found, when several on-the-ground Twitter users used it and found themselves retweeted widely.

“I didn’t know it would be a movement for a few months at least,” said Elzie, who was among the earliest demonstrators who began protesting on Aug. 9. But she saw first-hand how online interactions could manifest into physical action.

Elzie recalls “just meeting people literally off Twitter who wanted to help and didn’t know where to go, just making connections with strangers who all saw what happened and felt inclined to do something.”

The hashtag gained considerable prominence on Nov. 24, the day a grand jury declined to charge Wilson in Brown’s death. Before that date, #BlackLivesMatter had appeared in 2,309 tweets. Its tweet total rocketed to 103,319 that day, the study found. Tweets and retweets pushed #BlackLivesMatter in front of a diverse audience in the months after Ferguson.

Within two weeks, another grand jury declined to indict a New York City police officer who had fatally choked Eric Garner, another unarmed black man, earlier that year. More protests and media attention followed, pushing the phrase “Black Lives Matter” further into the public consciousness.

The lack of an indictment against Wilson, Freelon notes, was the tipping point. Twitter activity around the movement never fell to its former levels and a higher baseline emerged.

Black Lives Matter had started to take root both online and off. Over time, it became so recognized that competing hashtags from critics riffed on its format, sparking #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter.

(Photo: Noah Berger, AP)

Now, Black Lives Matter serves as a banner under which multiple groups, individuals and protests aim to address police brutality. Elzie joined other activists to form Campaign Zero, a 10-point policy plan that calls for police use of body cameras among other proposals. Last week, a coalition called the Movement for Black Lives released an agenda with 40 recommendations for policing and criminal justice reforms.

To Freelon, the policy proposals show that a movement “that has a very substantial online component can also have serious goals.”

But had Wilson never opened fire on Brown two years ago, had Brown not died about 150 feet from Wilson’s vehicle, had images of Wilson standing over Brown’s corpse not gone viral online, Freelon believes Black Lives Matter would have still happened.

“I think this was probably inevitable, the movement,” Freelon said. “Because the movement tries to communicate that these are not isolated incidents. Sooner or later, you would have seen something like this.”

Their names represent only a handful of such cases since 1999, when Diallo, an unarmed man standing in a New York City doorway, was gunned down by officers who erroneously thought he had a gun.

The death of Brown, who was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9, 2014, resulted in nationwide protests against what civil rights advocates say is law enforcement’s tendency to be overly aggressive when dealing with black men. The Black Lives Matter movement evolved from a social media hashtag into a national protest against police brutality.

The shooting deaths of two black men in the past week by police officers are the latest in a spate of cases that have made headlines nationwide.

A Minnesota officer fatally shot a man — identified by relatives as 32-year-old Philando Castile — while he was in a car with a woman and a child in Falcon Heights, a St. Paul suburb. The aftermath of the shooting was livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video, which shows a woman in a vehicle with a man whose shirt appears to be soaked in blood telling the camera, “Police just shot my boyfriend for no apparent reason.”

A day earlier, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot and killed during a confrontation with two police officers outside a Baton Rouge, La., convenience store where he was selling music and movies on discs. Cellphone video of the shooting posted online by a community activist set off angry protests.

There is no federal database that tracks the number of people of any race killed by police. Some individuals and groups have compiled their own databases, such as The Root and Hiphopandpolitics.com, using information from media and law enforcement reports.

Here is a look at some of the cases involving black men and women who died following police encounters.

2016

Akiel Denkins, 24

A North Carolina prosecutor concluded that a white officer acted in self-defense when he shot a black man in Raleigh. Police have said Denkins pulled out a gun and reached for Officer D.C. Twiddy’s weapon before the officer shot and killed him earlier this year. Twiddy was trying to arrest Denkins in late February 2016 after he failed to appear in court on felony charges related to selling cocaine.

Gregory Gunn, 58

Montgomery, Ala., police officer Aaron Smith has been charged with murder in the February shooting death of Gunn. Smith shot Gunn, who was unarmed, in the early hours of Feb. 25, steps away from the man’s home.

According to a Montgomery police statement, Smith “approached a suspicious person and a struggle ensued.” Tyrone C. Means, the Gunn family’s attorney, said he had not been told what the suspicious activity was. Witnesses reported that Gunn was knocking on the window of a neighbor’s house, pleading for help.

Rep. Alvin Holmes, whose district is in Montgomery, drafted a letter with Means to send to U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch. They requested that the Justice Department assign an investigator to conduct a full inquiry.

2015

In this July 29, 2015, file photo, photos of Samuel DuBose hang on a pole at a memorial near where he was shot and killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer. (Tom Uhlman / AP)

Samuel DuBose, 43

Ray Tensing, then a University of Cincinnati police officer, was indicted in July 2015 on a murder charge in the fatal shooting of DuBose, who was unarmed when he was pulled over for a traffic stop.

Tensing pulled over DuBose near campus for a missing license plate. His attorney said Tensing feared being dragged under the car as DuBose tried to drive away. The shooting was captured on video by Tensing’s body camera and depicts DuBose repeatedly being asked for his driver’s license. After DuBose refuses to produce it and get out of the car, a gunshot is heard.

Tensing, who was fired from the department, was released from jail after posting 10% of $1-million bond. The county prosecutor called the shooting a “senseless act.” Tensing is scheduled to face a jury starting Oct. 24.

Local filmmaker Mike Costanza took this photo of Brendon Glenn on April 30, 2015, five days before he was shot by the LAPD. (Mike Costanza)

Brendon Glenn, 29

Proctor told investigators he saw Glenn’s hand on his partner’s holster. But an LAPD report that drew upon security footage from a nearby bar in Venice found Glenn’s hand was nowhere near the holster.

The shooting in May 2015 sparked angry protests. It was the first time Beck recommended charges against an officer in a shooting. Investigators concluded that Glenn was on his stomach trying to push himself up when Proctor shot him.

Freddie Gray in an undated photo. (Baltimore Sun)

Freddie Gray, 25

Six Baltimore police officers faced charges ranging from misconduct to second-degree murder in the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray.

Gray died when his neck was broken in the back of a police transport van. He had been restrained with handcuffs and leg irons, but not a seat belt. The death set off several days of rioting in Baltimore.

The involuntary manslaughter trial of the first of those charged, Officer William Porter, ended in December in a hung jury. A judge acquitted two other officers in bench trials. The city of Baltimore paid Gray’s family $6.4 million as a settlement for civil claims.

Natasha McKenna, 37

McKenna died after being shocked four times with a stun gun while her hands were cuffed and her legs shackled. McKenna, who suffered from mental illness, was in custody in the Fairfax County, Va., jail on Feb. 3, 2015, when a deputy used the stun gun on her. She died Feb. 8.

Barbara Scott, cousin of Walter Scott, holds up a picture of Scott on her cellphone in North Charleston, S.C., on April 8, 2015. (Jim Watson / AFP/Getty Images)

Walter Scott, 50

Michael Slager faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of murder in the shooting death of Scott, who was running away on foot from a traffic stop in North Charleston, S.C., in April 2015. Scott was unarmed.

The shooting was captured on cellphone video by a passerby. Slager fired eight times at Scott before he was killed, reigniting the debate over how blacks are treated by law enforcement officers.

Slager, 34, was fired by the North Charleston Police Department and stands trial in October. Previously held in solitary confinement, he has been free since January, when he was released on $500,000 bail and put under house arrest. Last fall, North Charleston approved a $6.5-million civil settlement with Scott’s family.

Christian Taylor was killed during a suspected burglary in Texas. (Angelo State University via AP)

Christian Taylor, 19

An unarmed black Angelo State University football player was shot and killed during a suspected burglary at an Arlington, Texas, car dealership last August. Taylor was shot after Arlington Police officer Brad Miller was called to the dealership.

Police Chief Will Johnson said Miller pursued Taylor without telling his supervising officer. Miller was fired from the department, but a grand jury decided to take no action against the officer. An autopsy determined Taylor had likely used a synthetic psychedelic drug and marijuana before the deadly confrontation.

2014

Michael Brown Sr. holds up a photo of himself, at right, his son, Michael Brown, top left, and a young child. (Jeff Roberson / AP)

On Aug. 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson responded to a reported robbery and encountered Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson walking down the middle of the road. Wilson blocked the two with his police car, after which a struggle ensued through the window. Wilson fired his gun and followed Brown after he fled. When Brown stopped to face the officer, Wilson fired several shots at his front, killing him.

St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch announced Nov. 24, 2014, that a grand jury had decided not to indict Wilson, and the Department of Justice cleared Wilson of civil rights violations in March 2015. Officials found evidence that Wilson shot Brown in self-defense.

At the corner of 65th Street and Broadway in South Los Angeles, the site of the LAPD’s fatal shooting of Ezell Ford is memorialized on a wall. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Ezell Ford, 25

Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old black man, was shot after two Los Angeles Police Department officers stopped him on a sidewalk in South L.A. The shooting came only days after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and set off a series of protests throughout L.A. County.

On Aug. 11, 2014, two gang unit officers conducted an investigative stop after seeing Ford on 65th Street. Police say that when the officials got out of their vehicle and walked toward Ford, he tried to attack the lead officer. After a struggle, the lead officer’s partner shot Ford, who later died at a hospital.

Community members questioned the police account, saying Ford was mentally ill and was complying with officers before he was shot. In June 2015, the L.A. Police Commission faulted Officer Sharlton Wampler and his partner, Antonio Villegas, for how they approached Ford in the moments that led to the shooting.

Eric Garner’s funeral was held at Bethel Baptist Church in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Julia Xanthos / New York Daily News)

Eric Garner, 43

Garner died July 17, 2014, after a police officer in Staten Island, N.Y., placed him in an illegal chokehold during an encounter on the sidewalk, where police said Garner was selling illegal cigarettes. A bystander shot video showing Garner’s final moments, and it quickly fueled major protests and demands that the officers involved face criminal charges.

The city’s medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide because of the compression of his neck and chest. Two officers faced an internal investigation in connection with Garner’s death: The one who applied the chokehold was put on modified duty, meaning he was stripped of his gun and badge, while a police sergeant was stripped of her gun and badge and charged internally with failure to supervise.

Neither has been charged with a crime, and police say Garner’s poor health and his refusal to cooperate with officers contributed to his death. Police Commissioner William J. Bratton ordered a review of police training techniques in the wake of Garner’s death.

Akai Gurley, 28

Liang was patrolling a public housing high-rise with his gun drawn in 2014 when he fired and a bullet ricocheted off a wall, hitting Gurley. Liang said he had been holding his weapon safely when a sound jarred him and he accidentally fired.

In April, a judge reduced the conviction to negligent homicide and sentenced Liang to five years’ probation and 800 hours of community service.

Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times in Chicago. (TNS)

Laquan McDonald, 17

Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke is charged with first-degree murder in the 2014 shooting death of black teenager McDonald. Van Dyke was charged in November on the same day that the city, on the orders of a judge, released the explosive dash-cam video showing McDonald being shot 16 times.

On the night of the shooting, Van Dyke and his partner trailed McDonald for nearly half a mile, from a trucking yard where he was said to have been breaking into vehicles. The officers radioed for a Taser in order to apprehend McDonald, who they said was carrying a knife in the middle of the road. According to the video, the officers arrived 10 minutes after the first call and, within 21 seconds, Van Dyke had emptied his 16-round handgun.

Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty and is free on bond. The video has prompted local and federal investigations into both the shooting and the police department.

Tamir Rice, 12

Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback responded to a call about a black male sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people in a city park. The caller expressed doubts about the gun’s authenticity and said the male was probably a juvenile, but that information wasn’t relayed to the responding officers. Within two seconds of arriving at the scene, Loehmann fired two shots, one hitting Rice in the torso.

Rice’s weapon later was found to be a black toy gun. In December 2015, a grand jury declined to indict Loehmann or Garmback.

Yvette Smith, 47

Smith, a mother of two, was fatally shot on the front porch of her home on Feb. 16, 2014, by a deputy in Bastrop County, Texas. The sheriff’s office first said Smith was armed. Later, it retracted that statement.

2013

Jamar Clark, 24

The November 2013 shooting death of Clark sparked weeks of protests in Minneapolis. Authorities say Clark was killed during a struggle with police.

The officers, Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze, were trying to arrest Clark when he was shot once in the head on Nov. 15. He died a day later.

A key issue in the investigations was whether Clark was handcuffed when he was shot. The federal and state probes came to the same conclusion: Clark was not. Hennepin County Atty. Mike Freeman cleared Ringgenberg and Schwarze of charges March 30, 2014, saying Clark was struggling for an officer’s gun when he was shot.

2012

Rekia Boyd, 22

Boyd was fatally shot by an off-duty Chicago police detective on March 21, 2012, as she stood in an alley with a group of friends. A man in the group exchanged words with the detective, who fired five shots into the alley, hitting Boyd in the back of her head. No weapon was found in the alley.

Shereese Francis, 29

Francis, a mentally ill woman who had gone off her medication, died during a struggle with police who had been called to her home in Queens, N.Y., on March 15, 2012. Francis, who was unarmed, died of suffocation as officers tried to handcuff her.

Ramarley Graham, 18

Graham was a teenager when police entered his Bronx apartment without a warrant and shot him inside a bathroom on Feb. 2, 2012. Surveillance videos from the police pursuit showed Graham walking into the building, then police officers going to the building’s door and kicking it in.

They then ran upstairs to Graham’s apartment. One shot Graham in the chest. The officer said he thought Graham was armed, based on conversations he said heard on his police radio. A bag of marijuana was found near Graham, but no weapon.

A judge threw out a manslaughter indictment on a technicality against the officer who shot Graham. A second grand jury failed to indict the officer, saying there was insufficient evidence to charge him. Graham’s family and local lawmakers called for the Justice Department to investigate. New York City in January 2015 agreed to pay $3.9 million to Graham’s family.

U.S. Marine Corps. Sgt. Manuel Loggins Jr., seen in an undated photo, was shot and killed by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy in front of his children. (U.S. Marine Corps.)

Manuel Loggins Jr., 31

Loggins was a Marine sergeant and father of three when he was killed by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy on Feb. 7, 2012. The deputy approached Loggins after he crashed through a gate of San Clemente High School about 4:40 a.m. with two of his daughters inside his SUV.

According to the sheriff’s department, Loggins left the vehicle, then returned to it, ignored orders to show his hands and displayed a “mean” expression. The sheriff’s deputy, who said he feared for the girls’ safety, fired three shots through the window, killing Loggins as his daughters, 9 and 14, watched.

2006

In this undated family photo, Sean Bell and his fiancee, Nicole Paultre, pose with their daughter. (The Daily News via AP)

Sean Bell, 23

Bell was scheduled to be married the morning after his fatal encounter with New York City police officers on Nov. 25, 2006. Bell was behind the wheel of a car outside a Queens strip club, where his bachelor party had been held. Police, including plainclothes officers who had been in the club, said they approached Bell amid concerns that someone in his party had a gun.

Officers opened fire, saying Bell had rammed his car into one of them. They said they had identified themselves as officers and showed their badges, an account disputed by some witnesses in a subsequent trial. Bell was shot in the neck and torso and died. Two friends in his car were shot but survived.

Three police officers were indicted on charges ranging from manslaughter to reckless endangerment. They were acquitted in 2008, but all were fired or forced to resign after the police department concluded they had acted improperly. A lawsuit filed by the victims’ families was settled for $7 million.

2005

Ronald Madison, 40

Madison was one of two victims of a New Orleans police shooting on the Danziger Bridge in the days after Hurricane Katrina caused flooding across the city. The mentally disabled man was unarmed when he was shot in the back on Sept. 4, 2005. Madison and James Brissette, 17, were killed; four other people, all members of the same family, were wounded.

Prosecutors said the group was out walking in search of food and supplies in the wake of the hurricane. Authorities said a group of police opened fire on the unarmed individuals and tried to cover up what they had done by claiming they had been shot at.

Five former New Orleans police officers pleaded guilty to obstructing justice in connection with the cover-up. In April, they pleaded guilty to reduced charges in exchange for less prison time — five years after their original conviction. Another five were convicted of civil rights violations and sentenced in 2012 to terms ranging from six to 65 years in prison.

2003

Kendra James was shot in the head by a police officer in Portland, Ore. (Portland Police Bureau)

Kendra James, 21

James was shot in the head by a police officer in Portland, Ore., on May 5, 2003, after the car in which she was a passenger was pulled over.

A police officer said he fired in self-defense during a struggle with James, who moved into the driver’s seat after the driver was arrested. James was unarmed.

1999

Amadou Diallo is seen in an undated photo. (AP)

Amadou Diallo, 22

Diallo was an immigrant from the west African nation of Guinea when he was hit with 19 bullets fired by four New York City police officers. It was before dawn on Feb. 4, 1999.

The officers, none in uniform, thought Diallo fit the description of a man wanted for a series of rapes. They said they identified themselves as police as they approached Diallo. When Diallo reached into a pocket to pull out his wallet, they opened fire, saying they feared he was reaching for a gun. Diallo was unarmed.

A grand jury indicted the officers on charges of second-degree murder and reckless endangerment. A jury acquitted all of them. Diallo’s family sued the city and settled for $3 million.

LaTanya Haggerty was shot after police thought she had a gun. She was holding her cellphone. (Heather Stone / Chicago Tribune)

LaTanya Haggerty, 26

Haggerty was a passenger in a car pulled over by Chicago police on June 4, 1999.

An officer shot Haggerty, thinking she was holding a gun, but Haggerty, who was talking on her cellphone, was unarmed.

Margaret LaVerne Mitchell, 54

Mitchell, who suffered from mental illness, was shot to death on May 21, 1999, in Los Angeles.

The homeless woman reportedly lunged at an officer with a screwdriver after two police officers stopped her while she pushed a shopping cart on La Brea Avenue. Some witnesses disputed statements that Mitchell lunged at one of the officers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: Updated to include information on the LAPD shooting death of Ezell Ford.

My sister-in-law died earlier this week. She’s being buried today. I can’t say that I will miss her and a part of me feels bad about that stating that out loud but then there is a part of me that wants to own my truth now that we are all closer t death and I dying. I am certainly assured that if the tables were reversed, there would be no tears shed for me. Sad when I contemplate feeling horrible that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were killed, but she stirs no feelings.

She was married to my brother for 40 years. I hurt for his loss but if the truth be known, I’m still harboring some ill will towards him as well. I know that there is no magickal way to go back and change the past and I certainly don’t dwell there. But in these moments, when tragedy strikes and their hearts are aching because of loss, the pleasant thought drifts through my mind “Karma, motherfucker!”

Over the years I have tolerated abuse – physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual- that many would have died from. I’ve even tried that route when the emotional pain was too much t bear. And yet I endure. I watch the injustices, feel it, absorb it into my DNA and hold onto to it like a drowning man clinging to a life vest in the sea. I am well versed in holding on to it, using it as a catalyst for my rage, but no one has taught me how to breathe out and let it go. What do I do with this misspent energy?

I pondered going to her funeral and making a scene, but that always happens at Black funerals so no joy there. I thought about pushing her casket over (accidentally of course) and watching her fat, misshapen dead as roll across the floor like a deflating balloon at the Macy’s parade. I have spent the days since learning of her death contriving all manner of horrid,culturally inappropriate things to do and say, but alas I do nothing because I know me too well. For the hurt and pain she caused, nothing would satisfy this need. I would have to find something more heinous than my most heinous thoughts. Trust me, I can be very creative. She would still be as dead as she is now.

If there is such a thing as resting in peace, I pray that she isn’t. This must be what it feels like to be a republican. Wow!

I will say to her as I said in life and hope it will sustain me.

” I will think of you as dead until God makes you so, and then I will think of you no more”